Cancer was no match for Shaneice Brittingham’s determination to earn her degree
The 11-word slogan she dreamed up to keep her mind off endless rounds of surgery and chemotherapy mirrors Shaneice Brittingham’s fighting spirit: “If cancer couldn’t beat me, what makes you think you can?”
And in fact, thyroid cancer could not prevent Brittingham from launching a foundation aimed at helping others with the disease.
It could not keep her from working at the ARC Mercer, where she coached youngsters with developmental disabilities, or from designing a T-shirt with her signature slogan that has caught the fancy of strangers as well as loved ones.
And it definitely could not keep the 23-year-old Trenton woman from claiming her hard-won Bachelor of Arts degree from Rutgers in May, exactly one month before she died.
Now her family is carrying on the effort Brittingham started, producing shirts as well as car magnets and bumper stickers carrying her trademarked slogan, and working toward turning Fight4Life, her fledgling foundation, into a nonprofit organization to raise money for research, education and awareness.
“Nothing could keep her down,” Susan M. Brittingham says of her daughter, who on May 13 received her degree in journalism and media studies in Rutgers’ School of Communication and Information with an eye toward working at a television studio or maybe making a movie. “Even when she was tired and drained from the treatments, she managed to make the Dean’s List.”
Shaneice Brittingham came to Rutgers in 2010, after earning an associate degree from Mercer County Community College. She’d been diagnosed with small cell thyroid cancer four years earlier, Susan Brittingham says; the first of several tumors was removed in July 2007 after the Trenton Central High School student complained of a lump in her throat that wouldn’t go away.
She was 17. The biggest worry most of her contemporaries had was what college to apply to, which dress to wear to the prom.
“We called her ‘Shaneice the fighter;’ she never let anything get in her way,” says Joyce Brown of the granddaughter she and other family members knew as Neicey. “Even when things got really bad for her, she kept it to herself – she didn’t want us to suffer.”
Friends and family say some of Brittingham’s happiest times were spent on the Rutgers campuses, where she carried a full course load, wrote poetry and contributed to the Scarlett Scroll online newsletter, all the while refusing any offer of special treatment.
Zena Jubilee was Brittingham’s counselor in the Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences Educational Opportunities Fund Program, an initiative serving students of low-income families who show potential for creative and academic promise. At the funeral this summer at Kingdom Church in Ewing, Jubilee painted a picture of a young woman who was independent, strong and very much in charge.
“In fact, she eventually started to manage me,” she said. “In her kind but very assertive tone, she would say, ‘Mrs. Jubilee, here’s what I need you to do, and that was usually followed by ‘what classes do I need, when, where, and how long will it take.’ [She asked for] nothing special, nothing extra, no short cuts and no favors. And you knew she was serious about it.”
A former Rutgers criminal justice major herself, Susan Brittingham took a leave of absence to care for her daughter as the illness progressed and hopes to return to her studies at some point. Meanwhile, as president of her daughter’s foundation, she is concentrating on efforts to have Fight4Life certified as a nonprofit organization and to continue producing the merchandise bearing Shaneice’s rallying cry.
“What keeps me going is the drive and determination to continue her legacy,” she says. “She paved the way and she’s leaving it to us to continue.”